QAD announces Santa Rosa, solution enhancements and vertical segment solutions

QAD, provider of enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, has announced the availability of enhancements to its QAD Cloud ERP and QAD Enterprise Applications solutions.

QAD will present, offer training and demonstrate the new capabilities at the Explore customer conference, 8 to 11 May in Detroit US.

"Demonstrating our commitment to continuous improvement, this release focuses on important enhancements to our solutions, extending our Channel Islands user experience and deeper vertical industry focus," said Bill Keese, senior vice president of research and development for QAD. "We continue to improve the underlying technology and architecture while launching many new features, all of which helps our customers build their Effective Enterprises."

QAD continues to introduce new capabilities for its Channel Islands user experience initiative. The multi-year initiative provides customers an attractive, intuitive, device-independent user experience personalised for roles, tasks and individual users. Santa Rosa I, the third phase of Channel Islands, is available with enhancements including:

• Product-Wide: Full process map integration, security enhancements, additional microservices, extended personalisation capabilities and additional mobile support.

• Supply Chain: Enhanced vendor management functionality; QAD Supplier Portal adds collaboration and mobile access capabilities; enhanced mobile QAD Global Requisition System (GRS) is available to be downloaded from the Apple Store or Google Play.
  
  
• Manufacturing: Product structures have been added to Channel Islands ensuring a consistent user experience.

• Customer Management: New action requests provide simplified request management for customer service interactions. Enhanced functionality has been added for the customer service manager action centre, service orders, CRM integration and browses.

In addition to the user experience updates, QAD has made other key enhancements including:

• Financials: QAD Financials debuts a new solution to support revenue recognition changes mandated by ASC 606 and IFRS 15 guidance.

• QAD Internationalization (I19): The QAD I19 program, which tracks country and local regulations for financial reporting and taxation purposes to help keep customers in compliance, adds eight new country updates. QAD supports 60 countries and offers special country extensions for many more.

• QAD Enterprise Asset Management (EAM): A new version of EAM adds vertical-specific capabilities particularly for automotive, and introduces a maintenance manager dashboard that allows customers to track and analyse maintenance performance indicators in real time, enabling them to react quickly as issues arise and improve preventative maintenance.

QAD also announced an important update to its vertical focus. For nearly four decades, QAD has met the distinct needs of manufacturers in six industries: automotive, consumer products, food & beverage, high technology, industrial and life sciences. Recognising that each of those six industries is composed of distinct types of manufacturers, QAD has refined its solution design to address the unique needs of each of these types of manufacturers. QAD now offers a distinct solution for 24 vertical segments within those six industries.

"The reality is that there is a great deal of segmentation within our six focus industries," said Anton Chilton, QAD's chief, global field operations. "For example, within the food and beverage industry, candy and confectionary manufacturers face different challenges than those encountered by manufacturers of frozen foods. Each of the 24 vertical segments that we've identified face unique challenges in technology, competition, regulation and the business processes we address through our solutions. Identifying and drilling down on these vertical segments will help us to deliver solutions that more closely address customer requirements and allow us to help them align their business processes to support their business strategy and become an Effective Enterprise."